How’s this for perspective? In the final round of the 1967 NHRA Nationals, a very shaggy Don Garlits idled at the starting line in his front-engine Top Fuel dragster. Earlier in the year he had pledged to stop shaving until he made his first 6-second pass, and rumor has it that Wally Parks wasn’t happy that one of the sport’s figureheads was looking like a beatnik. Other Top Fuel drivers had been in the 6s earlier, notably Don Johnson, Don Prudhomme, and nine other drag racers at the Nationals—not all of them named Don. We checked. Garlits had made it all the way to the final round and still his 6-second pass eluded him. For the last race of the event, he lined up against James Warren, staged, and smoked the tires to a 6.77, beating Warren’s 6.95 and earning himself a shave in victory lane.

On the first day of HOT ROD Drag Week™ 2013, Tom Bailey ran a 6.72, then drove his Unlimited-class car 250 miles, and ran a 6.70 at a different track the following day. In fact, Bailey and his engine builder Steve Morris ran 6-second passes on five consecutive days in brutal Midwest humidity, racking up more than 1,000 miles along the way. A road-legal, license-plate-wearing, pothole-eating, 70-mph-cruising street car in 2013 would have put Don Garlits’ 1967 blown nitromethane dragster on the trailer. Holy &*#$! Bailey scored the first all-6-second Drag Week™ in the event’s 9-year history, and the only 6-second average over five days. Drag Week™ announcer and quarter-mile historian Brian Lohnes pointed out that Bailey’s feat is likely the first time ever that a gasoline-burner has run 6s at five different tracks in five days. Driving 1,000-plus miles and running 6s at well more than 200 mph in the quarter is an unmatched feat in motorsports.

But what’s a victory without a good drama? One day before Drag Week™ 2013 started, Unlimited racer Dave Ahokas made a test run at the Holley LS Fest at Beech Bend Raceway and posted a 6.87 at 200 mph, the quickest known public e.t. from any Drag Week™ competitor. Then, on Day 1 of the HOT ROD race, Ahokas ran 6.83. Moments later, Tom Bailey posted a 6.72. The Internet exploded with sniveling. Why? Neither car was born in Detroit: they are both composite-bodied. Ahokas’ ’68 Camaro is a full-on, Jerry Bickel-chassis Pro Mod car. Bailey’s ’69 is more subtle looking but no less serious; it’s the car formerly known as Project Sick Seconds when it was under the ownership of Denny Terzich. Both of these cars have competed in Drag Week™ previously but never finished. No one seemed to notice. Until now.

2/48If two 6-second cars are towing trailers down the highway, it must be HOT ROD Drag Week™. Photo: Kevin Cox/1320Video.com

What everyone noticed, however, is that five-time-in-a-row Drag Week™ winner Larry Larson did not show up at the ’13 event with his legendary, all-steel-bodied ’66 Chevy II that was the first Drag Week™ car in the 6s. Larry’s been vocal about his distaste for the composite-bodied cars in the Unlimited class, and many fans have jumped on that bandwagon, screaming that the Bailey and Ahokas entries aren’t real street cars—even if they are registered and insured and can complete the 1,000-mile Drag Week™ road trip—because they were not born on an assembly line. The relevance of that lineage falls into two categories: romantic and mechanical. On the emotional side, fans clearly prefer the stock-bodied cars like Larry’s because they look like a regular hot rodded car. They are production cars turned into race cars, not race cars turned into street cars.

In the practical world, that’s a very fine distinction. The chassis under Larry’s production steel Nova, and the one under Jeff Lutz’s famous steel ’57 Chevy that runner-upped last year and dropped out early this year, is essentially the same as what’s in the Pro Mod-looking composite cars. It has to be to pass tech. The real difference is just the choice of body draped over the full-tube chassis. Of course, the composite-bodied cars offer a tremendous weight advantage—with Ahokas’ car nearly 700 pounds lighter than Larry’s and Bailey’s 300 pounds less. The Pro Mod–like cars also offer the potential for vastly improved aerodynamics and a stable, stretched wheelbase. Of course, that’s also what makes ’em look bogus to many fans.

The Pro Mod haters claim that Drag Week’s Unlimited class can be saved with a simple rule: the cars must be born with an OE manufacturer’s VIN number. That alone would be close to moot if the rules didn’t also limit wheelbase and body profiles to stock specs. Without other restrictions like weight minimums (a gutted, OE-VIN’d, steel-bodied, tube-chassis Fox-body could be as light as a Pro Mod), all it would accomplish is making the cars look “right.” It seems a petty distinction, but it’s important because 20 years of organizing street-legal drag events has shown us repeatedly that fans lose interest when the cars stop looking like regular muscle cars.

In the meantime, we promised that the rules would remain unchanged in most of the classes for three years starting in 2012, so next year’s Unlimited cars will remain unlimited (as it has been for 9 years; despite what you may read online, the Unlimited rules have never changed). We plan to release 2015 rules asap, but we’re still on the fence as to any changes. The question comes to this: should HOT ROD limit the Unlimited class, or let it go wild and keep the Drag Week™ road trip as the final judge of what is and isn’t a street car? Email opinions to HOTROD@HotRod.com.

Regardless, never forget that Drag Week™ has another 14 classes loaded with inarguably legit, real-steel, haul-ass street cars. It’s insane that Mike Roy’s oversized ’71 Monte Carlo ran as quick as 7.83 this year to win Pro Street, chased by Dave Henninger’s ’71 Camaro that went 7.80 on Day 1. In 2013, Todd Maschmeier’s ’68 Camaro in Modified Power Adder became the first small-tire car to average in the 7s, running 7.72 twice and taking the third quickest overall spot at Drag Week™. That 7.89 is 0.09 away from having been able to win the first four Drag Week™ events. Rick Prospero’s 4,000-pound ’65 Nova wagon also continues to impress, running its quickest-ever 7.91 and averaging 7.98. All these guys are Drag Week™ superstars. Looking back at the progression of street-legal racing over the past couple decades, we realize how amazing it is that we’re disappointed when Prospero’s car runs an 8.10 instead of a 7.90. Those are the times we’re in. Regardless of the side you pick on the Unlimited debate, Drag Week™ is thick with greatness.

For this year’s print coverage of Drag Week™, we offer two stories: here, a rundown of the winners’ antics throughout the week. This time we’ve arranged them in order from the quickest class winner to the slowest (notice that, on average, the big-blocks are slower than the small-blocks). Next month, come back for a look behind the scenes at the road-trip adventure that you will never believe until you experience it firsthand.

Get far more photos and info at HOTROD.com/DragWeek, and stay tuned there for announcements about next year’s locations and registration info, and potential changes to the rules for 2015.

Power Adder classes must use nitrous oxide, superchargers, or turbochargers. Naturally Aspirated classes may have none of those. Small-Block classes are 430 ci and less, Big-Block classes are 431 ci and more (or a Mopar Hemi, big-block Chevy, big-block Ford, or Ford FE of any displacement).

3/48

How Drag Week Works

Drag Week™ separates bold claims from the harsh truth to prove, every year, who has the Fastest Street Car in America. Actually, the world. Yes, we said world. Drag Week™ is open to anyone who registers and passes tech inspection, no matter where they’re from or what they drive. Make it to the top of the podium and, since we don’t know of any other event like this anywhere else, you’ll lay claim to having the fastest street car anywhere. Not just street-legal, but street-proven.

Here’s how we do that: Drag Week™ entrants are required to race five times at four different dragstrips over five days, driving their competition cars on public roads from track to track on HOT ROD’s specified route. The race cars cannot be trailered, though they can tow a small trailer loaded with equipment. No support vehicles of any kind are allowed. In each class, the winner is the car with the lowest average e.t. over five days. The exception is Daily Driver, a class that’s limited to a minimum e.t. of 10.80. In Daily Driver, the cars run all week to score an average e.t. that places them on a 32-car ladder for a bracket race on the final day of Drag Week™.

Tom Bailey and engine builder Steve Morris (SteveMorrisEngines.com) have a lot to be proud of. They wanted to run a 6-second pass on every day of Drag Week™, whether or not that made their car the winner. “If anyone else did that and they did it quicker, so be it,” Tom told us, but so far they’re the first and only ones to do so, making Drag Week™ and street-car history. Entering Drag Week™ 2013, the best time recorded in the car was a 6.94-second pass at 208 mph, although Bailey and Morris were unsure if the car would even be able to make a successful pass until Monday morning at Beech Bend Raceway in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

4/48Tom Bailey’s hoodless Camaro had few issues on the street, despite running a new-to-them torque converter.

The car had thrashed a cylinder head during testing when a rocker stand bolt broke a week before the event. Steve fabricated a new rocker stand, changed rocker arms, and got everything put back together. When they tried out the new valvetrain, the engine wouldn’t rev; the torque converter seemed too tight. Bryant Goldstone’s Javelin, which was built to run in the Unlimited class, had blown its engine, so Bryant lent them his ProTorque torque converter. After they’d swapped converters, Steve tore apart the old one and it looked fine, so they weren’t sure they’d found the problem. While they were hoping to make a pass on Sunday, rain wiped out our pre-event test session.

When Day 1 of Drag Week™ rolled around, there were still a lot of questions. Dave Ahokas set the bar with a Drag Week™ record run of 6.83, but Bailey answered almost immediately with a 6.72-second pass at 214 mph, claiming both the quickest time and fastest speed ever witnessed on Drag Week™.

5/48Steve Morris built the 615ci big-block Chevy with twin 92mm Precision turbos. The car uses a Rossler Turbo 400 transmission and a Gear Vendors under/overdrive; all three Unlimited podium finishers had a GV unit.

“It’s a battle. It’s you and the car.” — Tom Bailey

In an interview on Monday, a jovial Dave Ahokas told HOT ROD’s Mike Finnegan, “We were top dogs there for about six minutes until Tom Bailey came along.” Ahokas has been jinxed and had yet to finish a Drag Week™, so his first concern was finishing, “I’d like to at least make it the whole distance, one way or another.”

Tom Bailey’s Camaro had some issues with tire shake at St. Louis, so it took several attempts to get a 6-second pass on Day 2. Bailey noted that with the new converter, the car’s 60-foot times were a bit off; coming back up by the 330-foot mark, it was pulling as hard as ever. With a 0.3-second lead over Dave Ahokas going into the final day, any 6-second pass would have accomplished their goal and guaranteed the Unlimited win. Rather than play it safe, the guys took advantage of the cooler temps at Beech Bend and turned up the wick, clocking a blistering 6.78-second run at 217.42 mph, breaking their own trap-speed record they set on the same track four days earlier. A fitting victory for HOT ROD’s 2013 Fastest Street Car in America.

6/48Check out the license plate.

Unlimited Winners

Name

Car

Quickest E.T.

Average E.T.

1]

Tom Bailey

’69 Chevy Camaro

6.709

6.8338

2]

Dave Ahokas

’68 Chevy Camaro

6.835

7.2222

3]

Sean Fink

’63 Chevy II Panel

8.112

8.3516

We Snooped on ’Em

With all the controversy surrounding Bailey and Ahokas, the HOT ROD staff followed them on the highway for several days to make sure they had no support vehicles, and we even rode along. See the videos on our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/HotRodMagazine.

Rumor!

Larry Larson tells us he’ll be back next year, even though the Unlimited rules won’t change for 2014.

Taking a spot on the podium for the third quickest car overall, Todd Maschmeier’s ’68 Camaro, piloted by Travis Gilpin, was also the fastest Drag Week™ car that didn’t haul a trailer behind it to carry gear. Witnessing the duo get ready to leave the track was always entertaining, as gear that filled the car left Todd and Travis–shaped voids that allowed them to squeeze in.

10/48Here’s a little nitrous bang at Memphis. This is the fourth Drag Week™ in a row for the car and its third class win. Its quickest run at our event was 7.68 in 2012, the one year it didn’t finish. With an 8.12 on Day 3 of 2013, an all-7-second week has yet to materialize.

“Nitrous is not dead. I filled more bottles this year than at any Drag Week™ ever.” — Monte Smith

At last year’s event, the Camaro smashed its crossmember and oil pan on a highway expansion joint, took out a camshaft, and despite best efforts, the guys couldn’t get the car to finish. This time around, it seemed like the only problem was getting traction and launching the car straight, as the team found that their rear sway bar had come loose, hooking the car to the left at the start line. With that problem diagnosed and fixed, the car cranked off a string of 7-second passes, shooting flames as it crossed the lights and as Travis let off the throttle. Monte Smith from NOS (Nitrous Oxide Systems) said he went through 12 of his 75-pound mother bottles of nitrous at this year’s Drag Week™—more than ever before. Todd and Travis might have been responsible for the lion’s share of that.

Mod. Power Adder Winners

Name

Car

Quickest E.T.

Average E.T.

1]

Travis Gilpin (Todd Maschmeier)

’68 Chevy Camaro

7.726

7.8946

2]

Bryant Goldstone

’70 Chevy Chevelle

7.9410

8.251

3]

Greg Mayton

’87 Mercury Cougar

9.175

9.2336

Rumor!

Maschmeier is selling the Camaro and keeps asking us questions about the Unlimited class.

14/48This car has entered Drag Week™ every year since 2006 and has been on the podium for Pro Street Power Adder every time, winning in ’09, ’11, and now ’13.

When you have a heavy car and lots of power, driveline parts take a pounding. Mike Roy knows all about it. He’s on his tenth transmission since he added turbos to his 4,000-pound Monte, including two in the two weeks leading up to Drag Week™ 2013. He blew up his ring-and-pinion in Beech Bend on Day 1 before he had clocked a single run. He had to scramble to swap in gears and make at least one decent pass to have any hope of staying with the competition. He got an 8.16-second pass just as racing was coming to an end that allowed him to stay in competition, while David Henninger bested his time with a 7.80 to take the lead on Day 1. The following day, at Indy, Mike added a bit of boost and got a better launch knowing that his new rearend parts would hold out while Henninger’s Camaro never ran quite as fast after it spun out on the drive to Indy and hit the concrete median.

On his sixth Drag Week™, Rick Prospero has learned a lot about getting a car to survive. Last year, he went through his transmission faster than Todd Maschmeier went through nitrous bottles. The stock-style suspension can’t handle all of the power from the turbos coming on all at once on the starting line, so Rick spent a lot of time tweaking the boost levels, adding boost only once the car got to 300 feet. The car has progressed from a twin-turbo big-block that ran 10s several years ago to running high 7s with 1.61-second 60-foot times, and all that despite a 4,000-pound curb weight.

18/48If it weren’t for the twin turbos behind the grille, Rick’s Nova would be quite the sleeper.

“We don’t worry about weight, so we keep piling it on, and the car seems to like it.” —Rick Prospero

Rick builds his own transmissions, and so far they have survived quite well, and he didn’t have to bench press any Powerglides this year. Give some of that credit to Rick, and some to the Gear Vendors under/overdrive, added this year, that reduced the engine and transmission input shaft speeds by about 500 rpm, which made a huge difference in keeping engine and trans temps under control on the highway. In addition to Drag Week™, Rick races the Nova at NMCA events.

22/48On Day 5, Eddie used what became known as the Freiburger trick at the first Drag Week™: blocking the grille for more mph.

“I kept saying the old class record was soft, and I proved it with one pass a day, in the afternoon heat, on the smallest tire allowed in the class. I didn’t want anyone to think it was hard.” —Eddie Miller

Pro Street Naturally Aspirated only managed to field three cars, and neither of Eddie Miller’s competitors came close to the pace he set on his very first pass at Beech Bend. There’s a little Drag Week™ history behind this class win. Miller won overall in 2006 with this purple Duster and an average of 8.56 seconds at 158 mph, using a big shot of nitrous. Fast-forward to 2011, when Doc McEntire won the Pro Street Naturally Aspirated class running low 9s. Eddie publicly called Doc out, saying the class was “soft.” Eddie was a no-show for 2012—and that after a lot of smack talk—but came back in 2013 with his purple Duster and left the nitrous at home. Putting his Mopar where his mouth is, he made a series of 8.70 runs for the first four days of Drag Week™ until cooler temps on the final day allowed him to rip off an 8.58 at 159 mph.

The 596ci Mopar uses a Keith Black block with 4.53 bores and a Callies 4.625 stroke crank. The keys to the immense power are the Predator heads ported by Jeff Kobylski at Modern Cylinder head. Intake flow measures a staggering 496 cfm, and the valves are 2 inches longer than on a stock 440!

24/48Rich Pedraza rolled his Mustang clear from California, and it paid off this year when a low car count and a dropout put him in Second in Pro Street Naturally Aspirated with 11-second times. Some racers are ticked off that we’ve allowed Eddie Miller to run flat steel floors in a class with rules that specify OE steel floors, but no one mentions that Rich’s Mustang is set up the same way.

Pro Street Naturally Aspirated Winners

Name

Car

Quickest E.T.

Average E.T.

1]

Eddie Miller

’73 Plymouth Duster

8.583

8.6888

2]

Rich Pedraza

’67 Ford Mustang

11.272

11.412

Wrap It Up

In addition to setting the Drag Week™ record for quickest naturally aspirated car, Eddie won for longest victory speech at the 2013 awards ceremony.

With 24 cars in the class, Street Race Small-Block Power Adder looked to have the most competition of any of the Street Race classes, but early in the week, it turned into a battle between Chevy-swapped Mustangs as two cars rose to the top. James Bailey and his SN95 Cobra used a Procharger on his 406 and had an 8.75-second average going into the finals, just 0.06 seconds behind Jon Wischmann. James failed to make a pass at the finals, allowing Jon’s twin-turbo 383 Chevy to take the win after making a subpar 9.35 pass.

25/48Jon’s Mustang uses a Chevy 383 with twin Precision 67/66 billet-wheel turbos that he plumbed with stainless steel. The rest of the drivetrain is Rossler TH210 (which is a Turbo 400 with a 2.10:1 First gear), a Gear Vendors, and a spooled 9-inch with 3.50 gears.

We asked Jon about the small-block swap, and he told us it was just an engine he had sitting around. Doesn’t everyone have a couple billet Precision Turbos and a 383 with AFR heads lying around? Jon’s not new to turbos: he also has a twin-turbo 496ci ’67 Camaro and a twin-turbo 4.6L ’01 Mustang. Each of his cars uses Big Stuff 3 EFI, which he’s become very familiar with. He’s working on a ’67 Camaro he’s building for the Unlimited class.

26/48We loved Chris Bishir’s little truck powered by a 5.3L with a couple turbos. The very simple setup was inconsistent—running 9.90 at the slowest and 8.97 at the quickest—but quick enough on average to score Second place.

Jon’s fiancée, Kris, urged him to compete this year and was his copilot and crew chief. The race prep was pretty simple: unload car, lower the tire pressure, swap fuel lines, and install race tune. Jon raced on E85 that he carried in a 20-gallon fuel cell in the trunk. An AMS-1000 boost controller allowed Jon to turn down the boost so the engine could run on the highway using pump gas from the factory tank. While the dual fuel systems did add weight, he filled it up with E85 Sunday and didn’t have to worry about race fuel all week. The boost controller also allowed Jon to tailor his launch. He typically leaves the line with 7 psi, ramps up to 16 psi over 2.5 seconds, and goes through the lights at 19 psi. His best run on Drag Week™ 2013 was an 8.63, and his best 60-foot time was 1.33—all on drag radials.

27/48Rick Anderson was the talk of the meet with his ’79 Mustang, which is 5.0 Mustang &amp; Super Fords magazine’s Project Pretty Ugly. Which it is. The 9-second e.t.’s make it prettier. The Light Chamois–colored Fox runs a 427ci Windsor with NOS nitrous and Holley EFI. Check out the hood.

Street Race Small-Block Power Adder Winners

Name

Car

Quickest E.T.

Average E.T.

1]

Jon Wischmann

’95 Ford Mustang

8.631

8.8296

2]

Chris Bishir

’82 Chevy S-10

8.970

9.3032

3]

Rick Anderson

’79 Ford Mustang

9.279

9.4822

No FoMoCo No Mo’

Five Fox and SN95 Mustangs won their classes. Of those, only one had a Ford engine.

28/48Curt Johnson is a Drag Week™ veteran, having previously captured a class win in Pro Street Naturally Aspirated with a big-block S-10 pickup.

Here’s yet another Fox-body Mustang with a Chevy engine swap, this time an all-aluminum 509 big-block with a Dart block and 13.8:1 compression that drank 112-octane fuel the entire trip. Starting with 14 cars in the class, it looked like the guys would have some stiff competition, although it turned out that the monster Victor heads ported by RFD combined with the lightweight Fox-body chassis made for a tough combination. It was the only car in the class in the 9s, and it almost broke into the 8s on the final day of Drag Week™, running a 9.03 in the much-cooler air at Beech Bend the second time around. The next-fastest car in the class was Richard Guido’s ’65 GTO powered by an iron-block, 517ci Pontiac, and it was still 1.5 seconds and 20 mph behind.

30/48Launches like this were the norm for Tim’s Holley-EFI-equipped, 454-powered, four-eyed Fox.

Starting with an 2008 5.3L small-block GM truck engine, Tim Flanders had ERL dry sleeves installed to run a 4.185-inch bore. Combined with a 4.125-inch stroke that gets you classic big-block Chevy displacement of 454 ci. That counts as a big-block as far as Drag Week™ is concerned, regardless of the base engine.

Kevin campaigned an ’82 Mazda RX7 powered by the same 402ci small-block Chevy that Jake Stelter ran in his class-winning ’67 Chevelle for Drag Week™ 2012. Tom Vigue at 3V Performance is the man behind the build, where the engine spent hours on a Spintron to analyze the valvetrain. At the heart of the engine is a big-block-Chevy-sized cam tunnel that holds a custom-ground solid-roller with 0.866/0.848 lift and 272/284 duration at 0.050. Kevin was all set to bang gears at 8,500 rpm when the Jerico decided it wasn’t cut out for Drag Week™ and fragged itself the Sunday before the event began.

32/48A drivetrain shakeup just before Drag Week™ didn’t keep the lightweight Mazda out of victory lane.

In its place, Kevin bolted in a Powerglide, and after getting the hang of the new trans, he ran a best of 9.73. We were hoping for more from the lightweight car, as it ran close to the same numbers from Jake’s much-heavier ’67 Chevelle. Even off pace, Kevin had the lead in the class from Day 1 and widened the gap on the remaining competitors each and every day until the final, when the remaining cars in the class all ran several tenths quicker due to the improved track conditions.

33/48This engine’s a ringer. It has more Drag Week™ left in it; we just know it.

34/48Ray Meyers removed his 440 that won last year’s class by running 10.0s (on the brakes) and replaced it with a beefed 6.1L Hemi, only to slow down to 10.60s and a best of 10.37.

35/48Imagine attempting a launch like this with two teeth missing from the ring gear.

The eight-car field in the Street Race Big-Block Power Adder class thinned to four finishers. Early class leader Robert Williams didn’t make it to Day 3 after posting two 9-second runs in Beech Bend and Indy, leaving Randy Belehar and Mike Burroughs at the head of the pack.

36/48Mike Roy assembled and tuned the 509ci big-block Chevy in Mike Burroughs’ ’71 Nova. The rest of the drivetrain consists of a Proformance Turbo 400, a Gear Vendors under/overdrive, and a spooled 12-bolt with 3.73s

This is Mike’s second Drag Week™, and he competed but didn’t finish in 2011. He returned with a rebuilt engine, a new torque converter for his Proformance Racing Transmission Turbo 400, a new Gear Vendors under/overdrive, and two fuel systems—one for street, one for strip. Each race day, Mike would arrive at the track with less than 10 gallons of fuel so he could pump out the 93-octane he was running on the street into two empty, 5-gallon jugs and dump in 112-octane race gas. Then he’d put the belt on the F-2 Procharger, plumb the intake for boost, switch from the street-fuel pump to a Weldon race-fuel pump, put in a fresh set of spark plugs, and bolt on the slicks.

Mike’s car wasn’t running quite right most of the week, but Thursday he discovered that an O2 sensor had gone bad. After fixing the sensor, the car was once-again running at full steam and broke two teeth out of the ring-and-pinion on his next launch. Mike JB-welded the hole in the inspection cover and installed a new set only to drive 250 miles to the hotel before discovering it was the wrong gearset. With no parts on hand and Randy’s Grand Prix at his heels, Mike chose to go back to the broken set of gears and ran it with two teeth missing. Mike marked on the tire where the broken teeth would line up so he wouldn’t launch with the pinion near the missing teeth. In his most nerve-wracking run yet, he clocked a very noisy 10.25, good enough to keep him in the lead. On Day 5 the final timeslips were due at 4 p.m., and at 3:48 p.m., Randy Belehar was still running. The Grand Prix melted three spark plugs and put down its best run of Drag Week™ 2013 with a 9.82, but it wasn’t enough. By a 0.02-second margin, Mike Burroughs pulled off the win.

37/48Randy Belehar raced at the 2011 Drag Week™ and we featured his ’70 Pontiac in the Jan. ’12 issue. At 4,200 pounds with real Pontiac power on nitrous, it’s cool that he dipped into the 9.80s on the way to Second place—also having to replace a ring-and-pinion along the way.

Finally, here is a Fox-body car with a Ford engine at the top of its class! At his first Drag Week™, Jeff and co-driver Jesse Martin drove in a pack with Drag Week™ veteran Mike Sussino and wanted to stick to Sussino’s plan to make one run each day, pack up, and leave. Getting through the drive was his biggest concern, and he tells us, “I just wanted to get there on Friday.” Far from just finishing, Jeff and Jesse found themselves at the top of their class, battling Mike Crow’s ’69 Dart all week.

38/48Jeff Sias is now the third guy to hit 9s in this class; the first was Jeff McConnel in 2007 (9.98), then Jake Stelter in 2012 (9.895). We’re thinking Mike Crow is gonna work hard to be the fourth. But we also think Jake is coming back for 2014. This is gonna be a heated class in coming years.

After Day 1 of racing, there was only a 0.002-second gap separating the two, with Crow holding the slim lead. On Day 2, Jeff pulled ahead by a slight margin, with the final average coming down to less than 0.1 second, culminating in a heads-up match race between the two. Jeff had already made a run that would have sealed his win, but the two had helped each other out during the week and had become friends, so they wanted to see their cars actually go head-to-head. Jeff told us, “I’d never raced with a car that was so closely matched. He Tree’d me, but I came around him.”

High temperatures and humidity all week kept Jeff’s Holley HP-fuel-injected Dart aluminum-block 427 from setting personal-best e.t.’s. The 427 responded on Day 2 when Jeff added 3 degrees of timing after a bad first pass, and he picked up 3 mph. Wednesday netted the best pass of the week as co-driver Jesse Martin surveyed the track and told Jeff that the track in St. Louis was the opportunity to go big on the launch.

39/48Drag Week™ stalwart Mike Crow put up an incredible race for Second. At one point, his W9-headed Mopar was just 0.026 second behind Sias on average, and then the two cars finished just 0.094 apart on a five-day average. Amazing! And both cars are bangshifted.

The all-aluminum, 351-based, 12.1:1, 427ci Ford small-block falls just under the 430ci limit for small-blocks and uses Trick Flow high-port heads prepped by Cleveland Performance. Jeff banged gears in his TKO five-speed, sending the power from the 427 to a spooled 9-inch with 4.30 gears. Race prep each day was simple: Unpack the car, swap street tires for slicks, and pull the spacers out of the rear springs.

40/48Dan Chisholm and Kenny Stasiak each made several passes at every track, pulling the wheels and giving the crowd a look back in time.

This is what HOT ROD had in mind when the Gasser class was created. Built in seven months with a lot of help from friends who installed a new frame and floorboards and repaired some shade-tree fixes the car sustained during its life as a race car, the Chisholm & Stasiak ’55 Chevy Gasser was a crowd favorite.

41/48A Dart Big M block, Bow-Tie heads ported by Mark Vinson, and a Bullet solid-roller cam help the 540 big-block Chevy make 753 hp at 6,500 rpm. Like many of the class winners on Drag Week™, it also uses a Rossler Turbo 400 trans. The rear axle and suspension combo is a little unusual: it’s Caltracs on a monoleaf with a ’71 Cuda 83⁄4 rearend housing and brakes with ’77 Dodge truck outers.

The two-man team had the car lettered to reflect the car owner Chisholm and the engine owner Stasiak. Despite the last-minute thrash to get the car built, it had a relatively uneventful Drag Week™, at least in regard to parts breakages and on-road mishaps. The first issue that was sorted out was a death wobble in the front suspension that was tracked down to a loose steering box. Once they got to Drag Week™, the only issue (other than “sucking gas like crazy”) was one of the rocker-arm locks busted at Indy after the last pass. Twice it needed valve adjustments on the road and it was “hot as hell” inside the car, but it ran as cool as can be.

The car had been raced and then spent years in a junkyard. Dan heard about it and convinced a friend to save it from being turned to scrap because he didn’t have any room to take it himself. Dan eventually ended up with the car after trading some parts and a bit of cash. It was at that point that Dan realized, “I couldn’t ruin it; I could only make it better.” The same week Dan dragged the car to his shop, the Feb. ’13 issue of HOT ROD arrived in the mail, inspiring him to build the car for Drag Week™. Dan considered a blown small-block until he remembered his buddy Kenny already had a big-block. Of course, it had a huge window in the block, but it was a start.

Some serious bartering and horse-trading among friends, some of whom donated parts, got the project rolling. Dan’s brother Dave turned out to be a big motivator, betting $500 the ’55 wouldn’t make it on the road. Mark Vinson helped Kenny assemble the motor and served to light a fire under the guys, making sure it got ready in time. A turning point in the build came three months before Drag Week™. There was no ’cage in the car and many time-consuming things were left to do; both Kenny and Dan knew they were thinking they wouldn’t make it, yet neither of them wanted to say anything. Five minutes later, Mark pulled up with fuel lines, pressure regulators, and a K&N filter. Eight hours later, they had made tremendous progress and could see the light at the end of the tunnel. When it came time for paint, Dan found a gallon of black at a price he couldn’t pass up and his brother-in-law Shawn Melensky sprayed it—in the driveway. It was his first paintjob, but you’d never know it by looking at the period-correct lace panels on the roof.

The Friday before Drag Week™, Dave paid up, handing Dan a paper bag filled with ones, fives, and at least a few dollars in quarters. The car gets about 6 mpg, which ate through the $500 winnings in no time. That didn’t dampen their spirits. The 10:1 engine runs on 93 octane on the street, so they’d add two gallons of race fuel at the track to be safe, bolt on slicks, drop the exhaust, and swap in plugs one heat range cooler. They barely touched the carb, only adjusted the timing once, and played with tire pressure.

“There’s no insulation, it’s obnoxiously loud, and it rattles so much you don’t know if the engine’s coming apart. By the end of the week, we enjoyed it.” —Dan Chisholm

Dusty Ward’s ’88 Mustang made its drag racing debut on Power Tour™ 2013, and it was also Dusty’s first year as a Drag Week™ driver, having spent 2011’s event in the passenger seat of Dan Nissen’s Nova (that took Third in Street Race Small-Block NA this year). Consistent runs all week long, despite a spate of front wheel and tire issues, kept Dusty at the top of the field for most of the competition. Glen Sheeley and his C6 Corvette posted the quickest time in the class at 10.53 but didn’t make it past Day 1.

45/48Dusty got some help along the way from fellow Drag Week™ competitor Rich Pedraza, as well as Mike Swan from Mooresville, Indiana, who helped secure a new front wheel. The damage from his shredded tire is visible on the driver-side fender and door.

Dusty’s Mustang had seen a transformation to small-block Mopar power at the hands of the prior owner, which was fine by Dusty, as he confided that, “I’m a Chrysler guy, but I’m a closet Fox-body fan.” When Dusty bought the car, it was just a roller, but the custom-built headers came with it, simplifying the process of bolting in another Mopar small-block with front and mid-motor plates. In the months leading up to Drag Week™, Dusty’s father Gary Ward, Steve Osterman, and Street Race Small-Block Naturally Aspirated competitor “Montana Dan” Nissen all pitched in to get the Mopar Mustang ready for the streets. The 400 that’s in the car now started as a 340 block that was bored to 4.10 inches. A 3.79-inch K-1 Technologies crank was installed for 400 ci after the block was filled to the bottom of the core plugs with Hard Blok. It uses W2 heads and adapter plates to mount the custom headers that were originally built for W8 heads. The dyno showed 590 hp at 6,800 rpm and 530 lb-ft at 5,200 rpm. The two Chevys it beat can’t decide if they were outrun by a Ford or a Mopar.

104 cars were in the Daily Driver class, the first time that class represented less than half the entries

24 cars in Street Race Small-Block Power Adder made it the second-largest field

0.9748 seconds separated the fastest (10.932) and slowest (11.9068) e.t.’s in the 32-car field for the Daily Driver bracket race on the last day

0.0274 seconds difference in the five-day average e.t. that separated Mike Burroughs and Randy Belehar in Street Race Big-Block Power Adder, making for this year’s tightest finish

4 cars finished with five-day average e.t.’s in the 7s

8 finished with averages in the 8s

11 averaged in the 9s

28 cars were equipped with Gear Vendors under/overdrives from the title sponsor; 8 of those won their classes and 9 others placed Second or Third

The HOT ROD staff joked that if Scott had skipped one Drag Week™ he’d save enough money on gas to finally get his Road Runner painted. But where’s the fun in that? Besides, we’re getting used to seeing the Patchwork Plymouth on Drag Week™ and the Joe Dirt look is perfect for muscle-era Mopars. So what’s the secret to a mid-11-second Daily Driver–class car? Scott’s B-body uses a 440 block, a Muscle Motors stroker crank, and Diamond pistons to displace 520 ci with an 11.3:1 compression ratio. The top end uses 440 Source heads ported by Modern Cylinder Head, a Holley 950 perched on a Holley Dominator intake, and a Mopar solid-roller cam that makes a dyno-proven 492 hp at 6,200 rpm. The rest of the drivetrain is a column-shifted 727 built by A&A Transmission followed by an 8¾-inch limited-slip rear with 3.91 gears. That combo’s good for a best of 11.37 at 120 mph, and a Drag Week™ average of 11.59, getting into the top 10 of Daily Driver and easily into the 32-car field for the Day 5 bracket race. After five rounds of racing, only Scott was left, having knocked down consistent runs without red-lighting. We’re expecting Scott and his 520 Mopar big-block to be back next year, but rumor has it that he’ll have the engine in a ’72 Charger.

46/48The 383 small-block, 700-R4 trans, and 3.50 gears in the 9-inch averaged 14 mpg all week, including drag racing. Cruising at more than 70 mph the trip home netted Tom 18.9 mpg.

Tom Dziengel returned to the Hot Rod class for the second year in a row in his Chevy-383-powered ’40 Ford. The car is set up more for a road race and normally runs FAST fuel injection, but Hot Rod class rules call for a carb, so Tom used a Holley 650 on the track. The car was powered by a TPI 305 at first, but it was replaced with a 383 when it developed a rod knock. The new engine got the car into the 12s and a cam swap and carb spacer helped it dip into the 12.5s, running a best of 12.51 during the finals in Beech Bend. Tom’s most memorable pass this year had to be the run in St. Louis, when Bob Guido’s ’69 Mustang crossed lanes right in front of him and smashed the wall. “From my point of view, it was pretty close.” Tom thought Bob’s Mustang would stay to the right, so he kept on the throttle for a bit and hit the brakes for an instant as Bob’s car crossed over about a car-length in front of him. More on that next month.

Tom camped at every venue, so he had a lot of gear in his car. His race prep routine was to swap to slicks, make two runs, and hit the road. At Beech Bend, he tried running without the carb spacer and lost two-tenths, so he figured the car was happy the way he had it.

Hot Rod Winners

Name

Car

Quickest E.T.

Average E.T.

1]

Thomas Dziengel

’40 Ford Tudor

12.517

12.6228

2]

Fred Cullon Jr.

’40 Chevy Coupe

13.647

13.8672

3]

Bob Larson

’38 Dodge Coupe

14.676

15.2884

See It All on Video!

For 2013, Pep Boys Speed Shops sponsored a live video feed from every day of Drag Week™ competition, and every hour of footage is available for instant replay. Just go to YouTube.com and search “Drag Week™ 2013 Live” to see it.

Also, HOT ROD produced a number of video clips of crash footage, crazy wheelstands, the 6-second passes, the Daily Driver races, racer interviews, and more. See 25-plus videos on the Drag Week™ 2013 playlist at YouTube.com/HotRodMagazine.